I have a very strong emotional attachment to many of the releases listed below. Choosing this list was exceptionally tough; I’ve been fortunate to discover some incredible bands and artists over the past year, and it’s safe to say that outside this list lie a great many immense tunes that can be found via a quick browse through TMMP’s archives when you’re done with this lot. However, the following choices are the cream of the crop. Read more…
With very few exceptions, Christmas music is terrible. Fortunately, the Boileroom team have good taste in tunes – and so this show was the perfect antidote to the overwrought saccharine pap that’s been unavoidable for the past few months. Read more…
Hacktivist defy categorisation. Their music is a mix of djent’s brutality and hip-hop’s flamboyance – but it’s impossible to merge those two genre labels without generating results that are…well…pretty shit. ‘Hip-djent’ reads like something you’d spot in an out of touch news rag whose contributors only feel truly comfortable with shameless fearmongering and casual racism, while ‘djent-hop’ sounds like a dance move guaranteed to alienate all but the most loyal friends. Read more…
When I first discovered Half Crown at a secret Sofar Sounds show in a beautiful Brighton basement, I was struck by how comfortable they were in such an exposed and intimate environment. On Everything Goes, Half Crown manage to achieve that same sense of fearless liveness and meaningful connection without any face-to-face contact whatsoever. This is a rare and valuable feat in today’s increasingly digital and digitised world.
Fusing gritty blues-ridden rock’n’roll with elements of hip-hop and reggae, Half Crown have developed an energising and exciting sound that retains enough familiarity to ensure accessibility while pushing a collection of idiosyncratic personalities to the forefront. While many rock-oriented acts talk the talk and look the part but put out a self-consciously studious, even bookish vibe on record and onstage, Half Crown have not only done their homework but also twisted their tastes into something more suited to getting their plaintive and heartfelt message across. That message changes from song to song, spanning the spectrum from the personal to the political, but you cannot doubt the passion behind the playing or words for so much as a microsecond. Read more…
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On the walk from Waterloo station to Camden, I passed at least three busking beatboxers. The faces were different, but the acts were the same – a combination of robot impressions, oppressively generic beats, and faithful and flawless impressions of a variety of non-percussive instruments. By the time KOKO’s dramatic facade came into view, the novelty of solo beatboxing had more than worn off; London was beginning to feel saturated by Beardyman wannabes. Read more…
Sofar Sounds are the most fascinating live music promoters you’ve never heard of. A global collective of music fans, Sofar tap into humanity’s need for community, connection, and intimacy by hosting secret small-scale shows showcasing the talents of a diverse range of artists. This evening’s event took place in an endearingly arty Brighton basement – an appropriate location for what was to come. Read more…
In an age of instant gratification, where everyone wants everything yesterday, dropping a sophomore album over three and a half years after your debut can be an anxiety-provoking event. It can be argued that music fans are more fickle than ever, easily susceptible as we all are to distraction and immediate amnesia – and under such conditions, almost any musician could reasonably expect the world to have moved on over the course of 42 minutes, let alone months. However, Beardyman is no standard-issue artist. Read more…
Some of the catchiest pieces of music ever written were conceived as advertising jingles. Whether it’s Go Compare’s opera singer or McDonalds’ I’m Lovin’ It campaign, we can all think of at least one jingle that we instantly regret remembering because (in the cases above) it either makes us want to kill ourselves, or was used to sell addictive products that could potentially kill you. Thank fuck, then, that Sonic Boom Six’s PledgeMusic campaign is being pushed out into the world via The Boom Needs You! – a song that I didn’t originally plan on reviewing, but which became so lodged in my brain that I felt compelled to write these words. Read more…
It would take a hard-hearted writer to heap criticism on a track called Feels So Good – and when it’s pulled off this well, there’s really no reason to in the first place. Upbeat, bouncy, and irresistibly catchy, this is a great comeback track from a band nearly stopped in its tracks by major brain surgery. Read more…
When viewed from the outside, alternative music venues can be easily misunderstood. Judging by the expressions of mainstream Friday night revellers heading toward Casino or Dusk or wherever, the queue of kids snaking around The Boileroom might as well have been the aliens from Mars Attacks. Some people don’t seem to understand that it’s not necessary to spray yourself orange and wear clothes so tight that you look like one of the X-Men after a Topshop makeover in order to have a good time.
Good times were definitely on the agenda last night, fastidiously trendy clothing or not. With jelly babies waiting in bowls behind the door and a mood-setting ska soundtrack engulfing those heading bar-ward, thoughts of the affluenza-ridden masses outside were quickly forgotten. Then a few bands played, and they were a bit good… Read more…